In wireless communication networks, for example cellular radio access networks, a network configuration and a cell assignment is based on quality metrics concerning for example a radio communication between a base station and a user equipment assigned to the base station. The quality metrics may be defined in specifications relating to the communication network, for example in the specifications of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). A typical metric may be for example a signal strength of a radio signal. The user equipment may constantly measure the metric by monitoring for example pilot symbols and may take appropriate actions, for example a reselection of a cell to camp on. How often the user equipment performs the measurement of the metrics may be based on network configuration and a reselection history of the user equipment. If many reselections have been done in the past, the user equipment may be defined as a high mobility user equipment and the metric measurements may be performed more often. Furthermore, as defined for example in the 3GPP specification 25.304, a hysteresis in the reselection algorithms may be implemented to some extent mitigate too many reselections and to minimize network traffic in the control plane. However, performing the metric measurements in the user equipment requires radio resource utilization and computing power which will reduce an operating time of the user equipment, especially in case the user equipment is a battery-powered mobile device. Furthermore, frequent cell reselections will increase network traffic in the control plane of the cellular radio network and may decrease an overall or individual data transmission capacity for user data in the cellular radio network.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved operation of a cellular radio network, especially in the area of the assignment of a user equipment to a cell of the cellular radio network.